David Moore is doing his best to save his beloved wife, Anna. After taking early retirement and moving back to Mapleton, Indiana—the place where he and Anna pledged to never live again—David's only hope is that Anna will finally find healing from her past.

In the sinful community of Mapleton, a pastor's statutory rape of a then sixteen-year-old Anna is only one of the town's dirty secrets. Years later with encouragement from her psychiatrist and David, Anna bravely agrees to return in an attempt to alleviate her depression by facing her memories head-on, even as they come in dark waves. But when fate intervenes and prompts an unforeseen tragedy, help comes from unanticipated places and brings new revelations and the truth. As the past collides with the present, David must rely on his faith in God as a complex mystery unfolds that leaves him questioning everything—and everyone.

In this gripping tale, a middle-aged couple returns to the hometown where the wife was abused nearly forty years earlier for healing and instead, is changed by a tragedy that reveals new dark secrets.